Confer Raises $17 Million in Series B Financing

BOSTON, Nov. 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Confer, a leader in endpoint detection and response (EDR), today announced it has secured $17 million in Series B financing led by Foundation Capital with participation from existing investors, Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. The investment allows Confer to continue its rapid expansion within the enterprise security market.

Since 2014, Confer has achieved a 1,300 percent growth in sales and a 2,400 percent growth in revenue, with production deployments across a wide number of verticals, including technology, retail, finance, pharmaceuticals, energy and communications. Confer outperforms competitors in detection and prevention as proven in independent trials and head-to-head comparisons.

"Confer's exceptional detection and prevention capabilities against sophisticated malware, combined with our lightweight footprint and simplicity, have made our solution ideal for the largest and most demanding enterprises in the world as well as small and medium-sized companies. This strategy has really paid off in 2015," said Mark Quinlivan, chief executive officer for Confer.  "Our customers now range in size from 100 to well over 100,000 endpoints and servers protected."

Unlike competitive products, Confer allows customers to proactively detect, prevent and investigate attacks on the endpoint with a simple-to-use, integrated solution. Confer's lightweight sensor monitors the host for the specific tactics, techniques and procedures that attackers use and feeds those behaviors to Confer's cloud-based "dynamic behavioral analysis" engine. The behavioral analytics engine catches over 99 percent of attacks against the endpoint. In contrast with many EDR solutions that are detect-only, Confer can block specific behaviors, disrupting the attack before information is lost or damaged.

"After researching the endpoint security space extensively, I'm convinced that customers are looking for an easy, lightweight, but comprehensive solution—one that prevents attacks and enables incident response—for protecting employees on all their devices," said Aditya Singh, partner with Foundation Capital. "The other EDR vendors we looked at were too narrow. Confer is the only company we have seen that has the breadth of features combined with proven traction within large-scale production environments. Confer is changing how customers think about endpoint security, providing endpoint security without tradeoffs."

Confer's headcount is also growing fast, having doubled the number of employees since 2014. Key hires in 2015 have included Chief Financial Officer Dave Gamache, who joined Confer from Airvana Network Solutions (now part of Ericsson). Confer has also made a number of key hires in sales and marketing.

"It's time to prepare for a new endpoint strategy. Security and risk professionals should consider new endpoint security solutions that are better prepared to address today's overwhelming threat landscape," said Chris Sherman, analyst with Forrester Research in his recent report Prepare for the Post-AV Era Part 1. "In the past, endpoint security products that were focused on providing deep visibility lacked the ability to actually block malicious code execution or behaviors. This is changing: a handful of vendors are combining varying levels of analytics with control to identify and block malicious activities as they occur."

This Series B funding round brings the total venture capital investment in Confer to $25 million.  Confer secured $8 million in Series A financing from Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners in January 2014. For more information about Confer, please visit www.confer.net or contact [email protected].

About Confer
Confer provides advanced threat prevention and incident response for laptops, servers and mobile devices. Built on an open, cloud-based platform, Confer enables enterprises to leverage the "power of the crowd", without a steep learning curve or investment in additional security staff. For more information, visit www.confer.net.

About Foundation Capital 
Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm dedicated to the proposition that one entrepreneur's idea, with the right support, can become a business that changes the world. The company is made up of former entrepreneurs who set out to create the firm they wanted as founders. This forward-thinking team of VCs has helped companies like Lending Club change the way money is lent and borrowed, Sunrun reinvent the residential clean energy market, and Netflix revolutionize media distribution and consumption, among many others.

Foundation Capital is currently invested in more than 60 high-growth ventures in the areas of consumer, information technology, software, digital energy, financial technology and marketing technology. These investments include AdRoll, Beepi, Bolt Threads, DogVacay, Kik, ForgeRock, Lending Home, Localytics and Visier. The firm's twenty-six IPOs include Lending Club, OnDeck, Chegg, Sunrun, MobileIron, Control4, TubeMogul, Envestnet, Financial Engines, Netflix, NetZero, Responsys and Silver Spring Networks. Read more at http://www.foundationcapital.com.

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SOURCE Confer Technologies, Inc.

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